Outbreak of Love (12 page)

CHAPTER SIX

On the week-end that Mildy went reluctantly to Westhill, leaving me alone to keep my engagement with the twins, she followed her usual inverted reasoning and left arrangements for me to have delicious meals while she was away, thinking this would endear her to me. Whereas if she had wanted me to long for her return, she would have given Mrs Trotter the day off, and have left the larder full of cold mutton and rice-pudding, saying: “That'll teach the little brute to think he can enjoy himself without me.” So that when she returned I could only exclaim about the marvellous week-end I had had.

There was a further slight strain in our relations in the middle of the week. Sometimes on the fine evenings of early summer, my heart full of Wagnerian magic, I would walk all the way out to Toorak along the river bank. On Wednesday as I was crossing Prince's Bridge, an open car drew up beside me, and a very nice voice said: “Hullo, can I give you a lift?”

It was John Wyckham. I was delighted to be offered a lift by an aide-de-camp, and accepted eagerly, although I thought that he would only take me as far as the Government House gates, which was not in the direction of my walk.

“I met you at the Radcliffes',” he said. “D'you remember?”

“Rather.”

“Aren't you a nephew of Mrs von Flugel's?”

When I said I was he asked if I often saw my cousins.

“I see Josie fairly often,” I said, “she goes a lot to Warrandyte. My brother has a studio there.”

“Is that the place with the sad saplings?” he asked smiling.

When we reached the Government House gates he said he would run me home. He asked me more about the Flugels. He said that he liked Australians. They were so friendly. He asked me if I was one.

“Yes,” I said. “But I've lived some time in England. We have a place in Somerset.”

“Oh, you're one of us,” he said.

I was highly flattered at being told by a member of the Government House staff that I was “one of them” and by the change in his manner to a kind of freemasonry.

Before he put me down at Mildy's gate he said that he would “like to see those sad saplings” and asked if I would drive up with him one day and show him the way.

“Yes, but it would have to be a Saturday,” I replied, ashamed of the regular hours of my labour.

“We must arrange it.” He smiled with great friendliness as he drove away.

Mildy, the victim of her inordinate affection, was watching at the window for my return. She was pleased that I was early, but suspicious of my means of transport.

“Who was that young man?” she asked.

“John Wyckham.”

“You don't mean Captain Wyckham?”

“Yes—why not?”

“Oh dear, how unfortunate!”

“What in the dickens is unfortunate?”

“You can't possibly keep up with people like that.”

“Can't I have any friends?” I demanded angrily.

“I want you to have friends,” she said, her voice thick with untruthfulness, as she thought she was my adequate friend, and also my brother, sister, mother, spouse and all those relationships which are attributed to the Deity in certain hymns, everything in fact except aunt. “I want you to have suitable friends—some nice Australian boy.” But she would only have welcomed an Australian boy if he had not been too nice, and if he had had some idiosyncracy which we could have laughed at together, when he had gone home. Miss Bath had a nephew of my own age, with whom I often asked her to arrange a meeting. When I met him a few years later, I found that he too had wanted to meet me, but that Mildy had always put him off, saying that I was working very hard, or that I only liked English people.

“I'll be dead before I ever meet anyone of my own age,” I said bitterly.

“Now you're not being yourself,” said Mildy.

For two months from the middle of December, the people who had met at Elsie Radcliffe's party were scattered over three states. Cousin Sophie took the twins to Tasmania, the Pringles went to a wooden bungalow called Helicon perched on a hillside above Ferntree Gully, where it was surprising that they were not roasted alive in the heat, or roasted to death in the frequent bushfires which ravaged the neighbourhood in those days. Some of the squatters went to their stations in the Riverina. The Radcliffes went to the Western District. The Governor-General and his staff stayed some of the time on Mount Macedon, but also went for a tour of stations. It was said that Lady Eileen always took pink curtains for her bedroom on these tours, as a way of keeping Sir Roland's fidelity, but this seems improbable as they would not have fitted the different windows.

There were two or three more dances between the party and this exodus, at which Anthea met Freddie Thorpe, and at which she danced with him the maximum number of dances which convention allowed. Josie also met John again at a dance and at a tennis party at Macedon, where she had been invited for a week by one of Diana's old friends. Then all these promising associations seemed to evaporate in the heat, but those whom they concerned were conscious that they were in the atmosphere, ready to condense and fall again with the return to Melbourne in the late summer.

Mildy and I went up to Westhill for Christmas. Brian came across from Warrandyte, and Miss Rickson our former governess was there, and in terrific heat we ate roast turkey at midday and wore paper caps and snatched raisins out of burning brandy, and Mildy made a great fuss of avoiding the mistletoe.

Then we went down to Diana's house on the seafront at Brighton, and the Flugels went up to Westhill. I stayed with my parents, partly because I preferred to be with them, and they liked to have me when it was possible, but also because I could bathe from the house before going to my work in the morning.

Mildy could not accept that it was more natural for me to be with my parents than with her, and for that month went off to stay with Miss Bath at a boarding-house in Healesville, to make it appear that it was only due to her absence, for pride was one of the chief ingredients of her love for me, as perhaps it is of most love, but more normally the pride results from the love, from its public acknowledgement. But Mildy's initial impulse was to own me to satisfy her pride, which perhaps was natural, as she could hardly have been proud of Miss Bath, her only other close associate. Also I had been flung into her lap. It would have been as absurd to fling a young antelope into the cage of a hungry tigress and expect her not to eat it. And yet Mildy could not simply satisfy herself by eating me. She was hedged round by all kinds of inhibitions and proprieties, and I must have caused her agonies of suffering, which were no less real because they would appear ridiculous to the outside world, and any glimpse of which only made me irritable, though I priggishly accepted all the luxuries she provided for me. I was in the contemptible position of someone who accepts favours, while repudiating the affection which bestows them.

Diana at Westhill was living in the scenes of her past, before the worst experiences of her life, when she was still full of preposterous hope. For half of the month she was alone there with Wolfie, as Josie was at Macedon for a week, and for another week went to Warrandyte to stay with her artist friend Frieda Felpham, where life was amusing with the young art students who came to stay with her and with Brian, a few hundred yards away.

Diana was a good deal alone, as Wolfie spent much of his time at the piano, and she could only take in a limited amount of music. My parents now used a motor car, but there were still horses on the place, and the old governess-cart, jinker, wagonette, and even the Waterpark landau were still in the coach-houses. Sometimes she harnessed a pony and drove along the rough country roads, where the bell-birds made their strange tinkling sounds in the gum-trees, to see old family friends at Harkaway or in Berwick. Often when the heat of the day was over, she would walk out on the hill from which the house took its name, while below her, beyond twenty miles of plain, was the golden expanse of the bay, with possibly a line of smoke from one of those steamers which had become a symbol for her.

In this solitude and in these surroundings, she felt that she had a clearer view of the whole design of her life, if it could be said to have a design. Being here, alone with Wolfie, and visiting these old friends familiar from childhood, brought back the expectations she had had in those days. Looking down towards the distant suburbs of Melbourne and the shores of the bay where she now lived, brought into sharp contrast her expectation and her achievement. One evening when the whole countryside was still, and there was no sound except the distant rattle of milk-cans down at the Burns's farm, it suddenly seemed to her that her life had been given back to her again, for herself to shape the years that remained. The children no longer required her. Even Josie who still lived at home, was half the time staying somewhere else. Why should she not take what was left, and do something with it? She and Wolfie were practically free. With increased dividends and Harry self-supporting, their financial situation was better than it had ever been.

They could go to Europe. When they came back they could sell that white elephant of a house at Brighton and build a little house in South Yarra, but with one very big room where Wolfie could have concerts as Josie had suggested and where she could entertain her friends. She said to herself “Wolfie and Josie” but in her mind was also Russell. She was sure that he would advise and help her in her plans. That he should have arrived just at this time, when her life had become more free, appeared almost to be an omen. He gave her the feeling that he wanted her to do something with her life. She was sure that their friendship was now established. She thought a good deal about him and she was aware that although the steamers on the bay were possibly coming from Europe, they could also be coming from Tasmania.

At last, in the middle of February, we all returned to our normal homes, and our lives became condensed again. The chief moment of condensation was at one of Arthur's Sunday afternoon tea-parties at the end of the month. All the usual habitués turned up, and a few extras. It was usual to ring up beforehand and say that one was coming, when Arthur would describe the other guests whom he was expecting, often in ribald terms, never failing to describe Miss Bath as “the wrong end of the magnet”.

This was the first time that Diana had come since the afternoon that Wolfie had kissed Anthea. Arthur, although he chiefly wanted to see his old friends, also liked a sprinkling of quite young people to give a sense of life and to provide decoration, especially girls with pink-apple cheeks. At the Radcliffes' party he had been charmed by Josie, and invited her to come whenever she liked. It was she who, with the indifference of young people to the quarrels of their elders, an indifference that could save the world if it became international, persuaded Diana to ignore the two years' breach, and come to Arthur's on this afternoon. Sophie's presence at Elsie's party had already been a sort of reconciliation.

Wolfie did not come as it was felt, though not stated, that it would be wiser for him not to meet the twins on the actual scene of the crime. His strong sense of propriety did not allow him to visit Mrs Montaubyn on Sundays, so he went out to have tea and supper with a German friend at Kew.

I went with Mildy, who as usual insisted on starting early. Miss Bath appeared a few minutes later, and Arthur, who that morning had said the most frightful things about her on the telephone, comparing her to a brown sow, received her with every sign of affection and pleasure. Her conversation consisted of such remarks as: “When your mother was alive, that table was by the window.”

She was soon eclipsed by the arrival of Lady Pringle and Mr Hemstock, who was really one of Sophie's protégés. He had arrived in Melbourne ten years earlier to take up an English lectureship at the University. He was of medium height and looked heavy, but not solid. His eyes were tiny behind very thick gold-rimmed glasses, and a few reddish hairs stood up on his bald head, giving it the appearance of a bladder of lard dusted with cinnamon. His clothes were not very clean as his sight was so poor that he could not see when he spilt his food. His voice, which had a throaty quality, boomed into the room, drenching every corner, and waking a vibrant echo of protest from the piano.

He repeatedly addressed Arthur as “sir”, beginning his sentences: “I perceive sir …” He liked referring to “My Lord so-and-so” but unfortunately in Australia, except for one or two at Government House, there was a shortage of lords, and he had to content himself with lord mayors and colonial bishops. He ignored Mildy and myself, and stood booming at Lady Pringle and Arthur in a way that compelled them also to ignore us. He hoped to be regarded as Melbourne's Dr Johnson.

Cousin Sophie arrived with the twins and Russell Lockwood. They had met frequently in Tasmania, and she had invited him to luncheon on this, his first Sunday back in Melbourne. They brought a burst of life into the room. The twins kissed Arthur and exclaimed “It's lovely to be back! We've had a marvellous time!” They looked somehow larger and more expensive than before they went away. Sophie gave a gleam of satisfaction at seeing Mr Hemstock, but tinged with annoyance that he had been brought by Lady Pringle. She greeted Mildy with rather less cordiality than she had shown to the servant who opened the door, and Mildy sat with the dejected air of a snubbed kitchen maid.

“Why d'you let them treat you like that?” I muttered angrily. She only smiled in a meek and infuriating manner, as she enjoyed my rebuke, thinking it created the tension of a lovers' quarrel. Cousin Sophie brusquely detached Mr Hemstock from Lady Pringle and sat with him in a corner, from which came blasts of erudition. Lady Pringle consoled herself with Russell, and the twins turned to me. They had been dancing a great deal with naval officers, and their manner, never very gentle, seemed to have acquired a new rather brutal heartiness.